About Me

Known principally for his weekly political columns and his commentaries on radio and television, Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.

Bowalley Road Rules

The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.These are based on two very simple principles:Courtesy and Respect.Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.

Followers

Thursday, 31 July 2014

The 40 Percent Solution.

Challenging The Conventional Wisdom: The Labour Right believes the party can only succeed by conforming to the prevailing political and socioeconomic orthodoxy; the Labour Left understands that the whole point of the party is to challenge and change it.

PHIL QUIN writes a mean political column. His long-standing
connections to the right of the New Zealand Labour Party are extensive and
strong. When he writes about politics, especially electoral politics, it is
from personal experience and with considerable authority. His contribution to
the Dialogue Page in this morning’s (30/7/14) NZ Herald is a case in point.

Under the heading “Inept Labour needs to aim higher” Quin
argues strongly that “Labour’s strategists are misguided in their conviction
that fewer than 30 percent of the vote is sufficient to form a viable
government.” Ranging himself alongside fellow dissidents, Shane Jones and
Josie Pagani, he urges Labour to “lift its sights to become a 40 percent party,
capable of winning a broad spectrum of voters from all parts of the country.”

For a history graduate from Vic’ this is a pretty
disappointing analysis. Between 1990 and 2011 Labour has managed to be a “40
percent party” only twice (2002 and 2005) and on both occasions Labour’s
success owed more to the condition of the National Party than it did to its
own.

In 2002 the National Opposition was in more-or-less total
disarray and slumped to its lowest ever result of 20.9 percent of the Party
Vote. Just three years later, however, National’s new leader, Don Brash, stood
at the head of a no-holds-barred, far-right crusade to re-ignite the neoliberal
bonfire of everything Labour voters hold dear. Unsurprisingly, its core
supporters flocked to the polling-booths in pure self-defence.

Even with these “advantages” Labour only just made it over
the 40 percent line, winning 41.2 percent in 2002 and 41.1 percent in 2005. The
average level of support for Labour since 1990 is, however, much lower. In the
eight general elections since that year it has won, on average, just 35 percent
of the popular vote.

In other words, Rogernomics long ago put paid to the “40
percent party”. Labour ceased to be “a credible party capable of winning a
broad spectrum of support from all parts of the country” the moment its
parliamentary leadership succumbed to (in Phil’s own words) “corporate
interests and right-wing politicians”. The very same people whose “fierce
determination to defend the prevailing political and socioeconomic orthodoxy
that shapes New Zealand’s capitalist system and delivers its beneficiaries
ever-expanding wealth, power and privilege” split the party, put an end to FPP,
and opened up the political space to Labour’s left for all manner of radical challengers.

An historian ought to know this sort of thing. Just as he
ought to realise that Labour itself, by steadfastly advancing what were
regarded, in the 1930s and 40s, as extremely radical policies, constructed a
new social and economic order which the National Party, in order to be elected,
was required to preserve intact. Labour’s social-democratic state had become
“the prevailing political and socioeconomic orthodoxy”. To remain electorally
competitive National had to accept the role of the “other” social-democratic
party.

Roger Douglas’s singular achievement was to effect a
transformation of the social and economic order every bit as radical as Mickey
Savage’s and Peter Fraser’s – but in the opposite ideological direction.
Neoliberalism was now the new orthodoxy which the leaders of both major
parties, under threat of severe economic sanctions from the international
financial markets, were obliged to preserve intact. So strong was the grip of
the neoliberal “Washington Consensus” that even when Helen Clark was in command
of a “40 percent party” she did not dare to challenge it.

And it is right about here in the discussion that Phil’s
argument for Labour to become a “40 percent party” begins to fall apart. What
he is actually saying is that, just as National in the 1950s, 60s and 70s was
forced to become the “other” social-democratic party, Labour in the
twenty-first century must accept the role of the “other” neoliberal party.

What’s more, a closer examination of the Labour Right’s
constant exhortations to Labour to embrace “the centre” reveal them to be
cruelly disingenuous. What Phil and his comrades are really urging Labour to do
is pitch its primary appeal to those New Zealanders who are still holding their
own (or even prospering) under the prevailing neoliberal regime. The people
whose precarious position of privilege vis-a-vis
the working poor and beneficiaries renders them unashamedly reluctant to
redistribute even a little of the wealth they have “worked so hard for”. Beneath a
superficial “concern” for the disadvantaged, these voters conceal a visceral
contempt for the poor. They are terrified of being forced to share their
resources with the “undeserving” and will have absolutely no truck with any
political party which suggests that, as citizens, they have a moral obligation
to put an end to inequality and poverty.

It was to placate these citizens that David Shearer waxed
eloquent about “the beneficiary on the roof”, and why even David Cunliffe
forbears from speaking out too forcefully about the lives of the poor and what
Labour proposes to do to improve them.

Unfortunately for Phil and his ilk, Labour’s rank-and-file
have no desire to become a “40 percent party” if, as part of the process, they
are required to give up all hope of ever again becoming an organisation brave
enough to challenge and transform the existing economic and social order.

The Labour Right regards this stubborn refusal to abandon
principle in the name of power as evidence of utter fuckwittedness. So much so
that he concludes his column with a frank call for heads to roll down at Party
HQ.

“If Labour fails to break well into the 30s, the party
president and general secretary should resign and party council members should
convene urgently to consider their own positions.”

Back in the old Soviet Union
this would have been called a purge.

And don’t for a moment think that Phil has forgotten the
party leader.

“As for David Cunliffe, he should resign with grace and
alacrity as soon as it becomes apparent he is unable to form a government,
which might be far earlier on the evening of September 20 than any Labour voter
would wish to contemplate.”

Clearly, the Labour Right, utterly inadequate to the task of
slaying the party’s dominant left-wing faction itself, is resorting instead to
demanding its collective suicide. What Phil refuses to contemplate, however, is
that the Labour Left, having concluded that the long and difficult journey
towards social justice might proceed more efficiently without the constant
nay-saying of those unshakably committed to the “prevailing political and
socioeconomic orthodoxy”, might decide to engage in a little blood-letting of
their own.

The proposition that Labour would be much improved by losing
the 40 percent of its membership who no longer believe that radical change is
either possible or desirable may yet be tested.

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Wednesday, 30 July 2014.

What are you saying here Chris? That it is better for Labour to be ideologically left at 25%, rather than aim for 40% and the broader approach which that implies. That the the Left is better divided among Labour, the Greens and Mana/Internet, because that is more true to the siren call of left ideology?If so, what is the risk of substantially more time in opposition on the alter of purity rather than stooping to pragmatism? It rather reminds me of some of your retrospective columns where you relive the glory days of New Labour.

Interesting - talking to some friends the other day, and more are more of them can't find a party to vote for. They're not extreme left, but they find labour at present too right-wing. They do however tend to demonise the Greens a bit as being hard left which is absolutely bloody ridiculous IMO, because they are middle-class and the left has dropped out such as it was :-). As someone said "We don't want much but....." I suspect most of them will end up voting labour anyway out of desperation perhaps, but it seems to me you can't rely on that sort of thing to win elections. These are not poor people by the way, but people who have seen their relative wages eroded over time. Some claim that the only thing keeping them afloat is working for families. Sad reflection on society that someone in a reasonable job has to ask for government assistance. Even sadder that this assistance is not available for people on a benefit.

That's quite true Chris the Labour party has always preferred being ideologically 'pure' than being in power-long may it stay that way! Being out of power may be 'pure' but it means you can't do anything except wine and Russel does that so well already. The Alliance claimed to be pure.... Losing 40% of 28% would thankfully make Labour irrelevant.

So much complacence and tosh in the media and these anti-democratic forces in power these 3 decades, you despair, loose your way in the plutocrats' murk. I rely on your, and other lonely demo-crat's, rousing reminders of the truths of 1935 to keep to the magnetic north of the rule of the people. 30 years of gratitude.

I am one of those who has always voted Labour but this time....... Probably, like your friends Guerilla surgeon, I will still vote Labour in the hope that they will come to their senses. But, if they don't get in this time I will have to resign from the Party and join The Green Party. Who in hell wants a party that is National lite. There is no point in voting when that is the choice.

Patricia, I've been voting Green or Mana for some time now, but the Greens seems to have gone totally middle-class, and God knows what Mana is doing the moment. I think there's a distinct disconnect between the MPs and the people on the ground, because I was canvassed the other day for the first time in over 30 years, and told them exactly what I thought. The guy on the phone seemed sympathetic. Mind you he's not likely to say 'fuck you' I guess :-).

Campbell: “We are still a small export nation, we are reliant on trade. How do we not look xenophobic.”

David Parker: “What National and Steven Joyce are saying (that this is xenophobia) it’s lamost like calling the New Zealand population racist.. If you come and live in NZ sure; that’s the way it used to be up until the 1980′sCampbell: “Untill Labour was in government”David Parker: “Right. In the 1980′s and 1990′s we made some mistakes in New Zealand and one of them was to deregulate somethings that should have been reserved for your local population. I don’t want a New Zealand sharemilker to be outbid by a wealthy person or company [ratbag of realestate/king rat] from overseas.http://www.3news.co.nz/Should-foreigners-be-allowed-to-buy-New-Zealand-land/tabid/817/articleID/355583/Default.aspx

That statement by Parker is a watershed is it not?Helen Clark started a trend of internationalism. We don't know her motives but we suspect. In the U.K we have heard Labour wanted to "rub the rights noses in diversity".The Campbell Live poll (14,000) "almost all saying No" is being belittled on Kiwiblog as "self-selected", "don't own houses" etc and the PM's strategy (I predict) will be to claim National understands economics, Labour doesn't. An elite on the left will do their best to undermine Parker's (all wearing their working class boots): progressives of the internationalist tradition. The result if they succeed is that Labour will be soft, soggy and mushy.